A course for USAAIO Round 1 qualifiers preparing for the full Round 2 scope and selected Colab L4 GPU problems. The official 2027 page places Round 2 in March or April and says it will be onsite; the venue has not been announced. The current season's official scope and allowed-tool instructions control.
Published: May 16, 2026 | Last updated: August 29, 2026 · Based on official 2027 USAAIO information
The international-school route remains first. CIT Round 2 preparation can be taken in person in Apgujeong or online across South Korea and overseas, but the official competition uses onsite proctoring; online lessons do not replace an exam venue or establish eligibility.
Verify official boundaries: 2027 USA-NA-AIO information · Contest Rules · official syllabus
Track
USAAIO-only
Proctored onsite Round 2 prep
Target
Round 1 finishers
A1·A2 completed/concurrent
Recommended Hours
About 13 hours
1:1 · varies 8-18 hours
USAAIO mapping
Full Round 2 scope
Transformers~Generative AI
After finishing U3, students can, in a GPU (L4) environment, fine-tune pretrained models and run advanced architectures in practice, while practicing how to reproduce their work in an unfamiliar proctored exam setting.
On the foundation built through Round 1, U3 adds Round 2's "Everything" scope(Transformers·NLP·CV·Generative AI), plus knowing when to use the GPU, memory management, and the Authorized Documentation/Allowed Models.
USAAIO Passing Round 1is the prerequisite, and A1·A2 Completion (or concurrent enrollment) is Required. For Round 1 prep, see U2; for the full track, see USAAIO Prep Curriculum Hub reference.
Below is the standard 6-week plan for 1:1. We run intensively from the Round 1 results announcement until right before Round 2, and all hands-on work is standardized on a GPU (L4) environment.
| Week | Topic | Deliverable |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Transformers deep dive: attention by hand, architecture variants | from-scratch transformer mini |
| 2 | NLP: tokenization, embeddings, pretraining/fine-tuning | BERT fine-tuning Colab notebook |
| 3 | CV deep dive: object detection, UNet | YOLO/UNet training notebook |
| 4 | Generative AI: Autoencoder, VAE, GAN | VAE + GAN training notebook |
| 5 | Stable Diffusion + Denoising Diffusion theory and practice | Diffusion model inference notebook |
| 6 | Round 2 integrated simulation (proctored onsite setting, GPU used where allowed) | full mock exam |
※ Weeks are content units, and actual time required varies by student. Recommended about 13 hours, ranging 8-18 hours.
Round 2 allows the Colab L4 GPU. We train students to make using the GPU at the right time, managing memory, and allocating training time second nature.
We offer an option to hold mock exams at an outside location so students adapt to an unfamiliar campus, English instructions, and other test-takers.
Students study the Authorized Documentation and Allowed Models list that Round 2 publishes in advance, and internalize that using anything off the list means disqualification.
We cover the entire Round 2 scope across 6 GPU mock exams, accumulating logs of GPU usage timing, memory, and training time to quantify operating efficiency.
Students build up notebooks for fine-tuning pretrained models and practicing advanced architectures, based on HuggingFace.
The 2027 Round 2 venue has not been announced. Student-authored Hugging Face notebooks and test logs can document the student's actual role, results, and limitations. No university publishes a fixed conversion value for these materials, and they do not guarantee admission.
GitHub
an organized repo usaaio-round2-prep
HuggingFace
Collection of fine-tuning and advanced-architecture notebooks
Track record
Round 2 preparation and participation record, reported only where permitted
Before reusing any work in another project or application, check the competition, school, and platform rules on duplicate submissions and outside support.
U3 is the intensive Round 2 course for students who passed Round 1. For the full track structure, see USAAIO Prep Curriculum Hub.
Current Course
U3. Round 2 Bootcamp
Proctored onsite · some GPU L4 · full scope
It's exclusively for students who passed USAAIO Round 1. Completing A1 and A2 (or taking them concurrently) is required, and it covers Round 2's "Everything" scope and GPU-based model training.
The official 2027 page says Round 2 will be onsite in March or April, with some Colab L4 GPU problems. The venue, exact scope, documentation, and allowed-model rules remain subject to the organizer's current instructions.
We offer an option to hold mock exams at an outside location so students adapt to an unfamiliar campus, English instructions, and other test-takers. It removes the shock of the exam-day environment in advance.
No. It's a recommended figure for 1:1, varying by ±30-50% (about 8-18 hours). We run intensively from the Round 1 results announcement until right before Round 2, and we work out an individual plan at the first diagnostic.
If you pass Round 2, it leads into U4 (Camp prep). Keep only truthful records of your own preparation, notebooks, role, and result; there is no official college-admissions conversion value or guarantee. Check the USAAIO competition guide for the current schedule.
Based on whether you passed Round 1 and your A1·A2 completion status, we'll individually design your intensive Round 2 schedule in a diagnostic session.